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About HistPhil

HistPhil is a web publication on the history of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, with a particular emphasis on how history can shed light on contemporary philanthropic issues and practice. In founding and editing this blog, we hope to foster humanistically oriented discussion and debate on the sector and to bring together scholars, nonprofit practitioners, and philanthropists in common dialogue on the past, present, and future of philanthropy. For more on the vision and motivation behind HistPhil, please see the opening post. And if you would like to pitch a blog post idea, please feel free to contact us via email (historyofphilanthropyblog@gmail.com) or Twitter (@HistPhil).

Benjamin (@BenSoskis) is a Research Associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. He is a frequent contributor to the Chronicle of Philanthropy; his writing on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector has also appeared in the Washington Post, The Atlantic online, the New Yorker.com, the Guardian, the American Prospect, and the Foundation Review. He is the co-author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song that Marches On (Oxford, 2013), and Both More and No More: The Historical Split between Charity and Philanthropy (Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, 2014). He is also a consultant for the history of philanthropy program of the Open Philanthropy Project, which from 2015-2016 funded his work on this blog. He lives in Washington DC with his wife and two daughters.

Maribel is an Assistant Professor of History at Clemson University and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow during the 2016-18 academic years. A twentieth-century U.S. historian and historian of U.S. philanthropy, she is currently writing a book on the institutional roots of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944). It traces how and why the Carnegie Corporation financed this study of black Americans, and how Myrdal related to these funders’ intentions. Her subsequent book will continue the chronology of this first project and explore what big philanthropy– Carnegie Corporation along with Rockefeller and Ford foundations– meant by advocating racial equality in the U.S. during the later half of the twentieth century. For more information on Maribel, please go to http://www.maribelmorey.com.

3 thoughts on “About HistPhil”

Hi Linda,
Thanks for your query. Yes, we agree that it’s important to be transparent about our funding sources. In his above bio, Ben mentions that he is a consultant for the history of philanthropy program of the Open Philanthropy Project, jointly funded by Good Ventures and GiveWell, which has also supported his work on HistPhil. Stan and I do not receive blog-specific funding. However, we both are employed by academic institutions; and at least in my case this year, I included HistPhil as a professional service activity during my yearly review.
Very best,
Maribel